


Surveillance

by Tammany



Series: Mr. Spence's Repose [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: Espionage, Friendship/Love, Gen, Holmes Brothers, M/M, Male Bonding, Male romance, friendships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-20 00:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3630258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story continues. Trouble in paradise, but not trouble between the residents.</p><p>Sherlock has a lot to try to take in.</p><p>Transcript quotes from Ariane DeVere's superb transcripts. Such a brilliant, useful service she's done us!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Mr. Spence and Lestrade were under surveillance. Not that they knew it. They sat at their ease on folding camp chairs that reminded Lestrade of the bastard offspring of a dragon and one of Mr. Spence’s old umbrellas from his former incarnation. Mr. Spence sat in the shade, protecting his fair skin from sunburn—though Lestrade did wonder how the sun ever might have made its way past the wide-brimmed canvas Aussie hat knock-off, the sun glasses, and the layers of sunscreen, finishing with a heavy layer of dead-white zinc-based paste. Mr. Spence wore a long-sleeved white shirt, tan cotton duck trousers, and old-man sneakers with elastic gussets, fit for people who can no longer reliably bend over and tie their own laces.

He looked very silly. There weren’t many people at the lake, but those who were there all noticed Mr. Spence. A little boy out walking with his mum grabbed her hand and pulled her down to whisper in her ear, all the while trying to find a way to point politely. He failed, of course. There really is no way to point politely at strange, middle-aged men fishing for carp in clothing and makeup better suited to the stage of a panto.

Had it been anyone else, Lestrade would have thought perhaps Mr. Spence did not know he looked silly. This, though, was Mr. Spence. Mr. Spence knew how to craft a look to a nicety. His costumes were works of genius. His understanding of how he was seen in the world was unmatched. Therefore Mr. Spence must know he looked a right twit…and he was fishing by the bank of the lake in full regalia regardless.

The only reason Lestrade could see for making a public spectacle of himself, besides a longing to go fishing, was to teach Lestrade how to fish. Lestrade was fairly sure the second was true. Mr. Spence had been very bossy for the past week planning the trip to the coarse fishery near Bolton. He’d arranged everything. He’d clucked constantly. Through it all he kept saying, “I think you’ll like this.” “I hope you’ll like this.” “Tell me if you don’t like it.”

Lestrade, no fool, had worked it out. Mr. Spence liked it—and wanted to share it with Lestrade. The desire to sit at the side of a lake teaching Lestrade how to throw a worm on a line at a lazy carp had overruled any desire to stay home and avoid the sun and the silly clothing and the layers of zinc-white salve.

In return, Lestrade fought valiantly to accept this entire thing on its own terms. It was a bit of a struggle. If Sherlock or John or Donovan had been here he might have been baited into sharp comparisons of fishing and slow stakeouts…or boring surveillance work. It was a good thing no one was here but Mr. Spence. That way he couldn’t hurt his friend’s feelings.

Unlike Mr. Spence, Lestrade sat in the sun. He wore a short sleeved T-shirt and a pair of shorts, and had an Man U team jacket tossed over the back of his folding chair. He pulled his line in regularly, frowned at missing or abused bait, threaded a new worm on the line, and tossed it out again, to watch the bobber float on the still water of the lake. Behind his bobber was a sheet of water lily pads and blossoms.

“They never bite properly,” he growled to Mr. Spence the next time he drew the line in without bait.

“You’re not putting the worms on securely,” Mr. Spence said. “You have to make them work for their dinner.”

“Not nice for the worm.”

“No,” Mr. Spence agreed. “But, then, it’s never nice being the bait, is it? Damned few worms walk away at the end of the day.”

Lestrade felt a quiver pass through the line and gave a quick tug. The bobber seemed to leap from the water trailing a tail of line, leader….and empty hook.

“Too soon,” Mr. Spence said. “Try again.”

“At this rate we’re not having fish dinner,” Lestrade grumbled.

“That’s all right,” Mr. Spence said, calmly. “I have steaks in the fridge. And, really, I’ll be happy enough to be spared cleaning and filleting. Filleting carp is fussy work.”

Lestrade stared at him. “You don’t care if we catch any?” he squawked, scandalized. “Wha’ the ‘ell are we doing this for, then, if it’s not to bring home fish?”

Mr. Spence sighed. A bit helplessly, he said. “I…suppose I was too optimistic that you’d see the appeal.”

“What appeal?”

“A quiet day. A pretty lake. A cooperative lot of fish perfectly willing to evade the hook. There is no better excuse to loiter known to man.”

Lestrade stared, then barked with laughter. “You sly fox, you. That’s really it, isn’t it? Sit on your arse in the shade pretending to do useful work, and all the while you’re…what? Doing Sudoku in your head?”

“Trying to recall the tenor line of _Amatemi ben mio,”_ he said, and hummed softly for a moment. “Italian motet,” he said. “Gorgeous when you hear all the voices together. Like audible chocolate mousse.”

Lestrade’s face blossomed with a grin. “You’re a complete nutter, mate.” Then, “And what else? What else is going through that mind while you sit there, eh?”

Mr. Spence smiled. His smile was never as easy and effortless as Lestrade’s, and it never seemed to fill his face the same way. There was something about Mr. Spence’s smiles that remained shy and hesitant even when they were sincere and spontaneous—which they were more and more often of late.

“Oh, I don’t know. Looking at the shadows of the leaves mix with the ripples and the reflections on the lake surface,” he said. “Making bets with myself how long the mother across the way will succeed in keeping her daughter out of the…mmmph. Too late. I thought once the girl spotted the frog spawn she’d be in after it…”

“Frog spawn?” Lestrade said, brightening up. “There’s frog spawn here?”

Mr. Spence studied him with cool, amused eyes, then nodded, grinning. “Indeed.” After a moment’s consideration, he said, “At this time of year there are almost certainly also pollywogs.”

Lestrade grinned. “I’ve been wanting a frog for the fountain I’m putting in the back at my place,” he said.

Mr. Spence sighed, but said, “I brought zip-bags, if you’re interested.  And jars.”

Lestrade gave a whoop and began rummaging through Mr. Spence’s supply tote without bothering to ask. Only when he’d equipped himself did he say, apologetically, “You’ll watch my line for me, yeah?”

“Why not pull it in?”

“Because then I wouldn’t be fishing with you,” Lestrade said, and walked away chuckling, knowing Mr. Spence was shaking his head and smiling.

What he didn’t know was that they were watched.

He would have been disturbed if he’d known. He hadn’t given much thought to surveillance the past months. He and Mr. Spence lived in what, to Lestrade, seemed like a safe, innocent bubble, protected by Mr. Spence’s prior “death,” protected by small-town and rural simplicity, protected by whatever kind fortune is supposed to attend men in late middle-age who have tumbled into the kind of desperate, consuming friendship more often associated with childhood.

Cold, angry eyes watched, though, from across the lake, hidden by a tall brick wall and by the branches of trees. A hungry hunter of a mind evaluated their situation, weighed their vulnerability, and added the ugly total to previous tallies.

Mr. Spence and Lestrade were wide open, unprotected by anything—not even by their own trained skills. Anyone who intended to make a hit could do so and be gone before either man could act to stop the tragedy.

Sherlock swore under his breath.

What was Lestrade doing here, anyway?

His eyes narrowed, and he pouted and scowled. Mycroft knew better. Hell, Lestrade knew better. What the hell were two veteran spies playing at, out here in the middle of miles of cover, making targets of themselves? They had been posed perfectly before, framed by a gap in the trees that rimmed the lake, sitting neatly in their gawky ostrich-legged chairs on the walk that ran through the park by the shore. Mycroft had died for most practical purposes to avoid being that sort of target—and here he was out in the middle of a public park making a spectacle of himself in horrible clothes and clown-like salves with a hat that would have made an Australian alligator die laughing. And there was Lestrade, who wasn’t supposed to be here at all. He was supposed to be settled in his drab little ground story flat in Chiswick, growing tomatoes in a cold frame and going into debt betting on the horses. Definitely not laughing his arse off on the other side of the lake dredging infants out of the water and sloshing around after pollywogs.

The truth was, Sherlock’s elders never had stopped scandalizing him. Lestrade and his stubborn willingness to risk life and limb on solving cases the slow, stodgy way. Trusting his life to his idiot team mates. Drinking and laughing and dancing—dancing when Sherlock felt constrained to wait for a lucky case that required it of him. And Mycroft? I mean—ruling half the world and three quarters of England! And his sex life!

Never underestimate a younger sibling’s capacity for conservative horror.

Sherlock shook his tousled curls. He frowned some more. Then he began a slow drift through cover, toward Mycroft.

Good lord, the man might as well have brought a candy-striped beach umbrella for all the reserve and modesty he was demonstrating.

Sherlock watched as Mycroft’s line bobbed. Mycroft gave the bobber a reproachful glance, clearly wishing it to stop bobbing. Then, grudgingly, he reeled in the line. It was a simple rod—almost primitive. Certainly not the sort of high-tech marvel used for serious fly fishing. Nothing more than a long rod, a big reel, and that was it. Mycroft cranked the fish in, muttering under his breath, and paced from his chair to the water’s edge, where a vast and weighty carp lay squirming. He hoisted his catch up, and frowned at it. Sherlock, approaching, heard him scold.

“Whatever are you thinking, taking bait at nigh-on midday? You must be suicidal, that’s all I can think. You know better or you’d never have grown to such a size!” Mycroft huffted, and said, in a confidential tone, “Look, you’ve barely been hooked. Just a neat stab under the lower jaw. If I give it a push and a twist—look. You’re off with less damage than you’d take going up against a crayfish. Just think, if you gave one good wriggle I’m sure I’d never be able to hold you.” The fish stared, and gave a half-hearted flap—and Mycroft, with great energy, said, “Whoops! See—there you go. Free! Such a shame. I suppose it’s steak not steamed carp for dinner.” He didn’t sound all that remorseful. But, then, as nearly as Sherlock could recall Mycroft had never liked eating freshwater fish.

“You do know the people hunting for you aren’t likely to be as magnanimous?” Sherlock murmured, sliding silently up behind Mycroft and looking out over his shoulder.

His brother jumped, startled, then turned and glared. “Sherlock, what are you doing here?” he hissed. “I’m in hiding. Do you want to lead people directly to me?”

“Little late to worry about that,” Sherlock growled, furious. He jerked his head to where he’d last seen Lestrade prancing in the water. He failed to notice that Lestrade was no longer there, too filled with annoyance at his brother to let his attention wander. “What difference does it make if I come out to check on you, if Lestrade’s as good as living in your pocket?”

Mycroft grimaced. “He’s got his own flat in town,” he said, rather too rapidly. Then he added, “It’s been years, Sherlock. I’ve been dead forever.”

“No, you’ve been dead the blink of an eye,” Sherlock snarled. “And they’re not done hunting you.” He growled under his breath and, in pique, knocked the ugly canvas hat from his brother’s head. “I came out to be sure you were safe. That you were taking precautions.” He flicked a finger over the white zinc salve, and grimaced. “Instead I find you and Idiot Lestrade parading around making fools of yourselves. You might as well paint ‘kill me now,’ on your forehead and have done with it. God knows, there’s enough open space to fit the message in these days.”

“Sod off,” Mycroft snapped, reverting to teenaged frustration. Sherlock was so good at baiting him. It wasn’t fair. “I’m under the radar, Sherlock.”

“Yeah, well—you’re not living quietly enough to avoid the drone surveillance. I told you—someone’s hunting you.”

“Like you?”

Sherlock straightened, then—suddenly aware of what seemed to be a gun barrel in his back, over his kidneys. The voice was Lestrade’s. It was not pleasant.

“You’re putting my brother in danger,” Sherlock said, cold and humiliated that he lost track of one of his subjects.

“Then come explain how, instead of indulging in performance art,” Lestrade snapped. The gun barrel was gone, then, and Sherlock couldn’t work out whether it had been real, and where it had gone. Lestrade was already moving to the chairs, picking up tackle and gear, packing things away. The retired copper-spy looked over his shoulder at Sherlock’s brother, and said, far more gently, “Come on, then, Mr. Spence. No point staying here if Sherlock’s going to chase the fish away, yeah?”

Sherlock frowned. Mycroft managed a small, tight smile at the older man.

“No. He never did understand the zen of fishing.”

Mycroft folded his chair, packed items into his tote, and was soon standing beside Lestrade, who held his own load tucked into one arm and fist, and held the retrieved canvas hat in the other. With a soft smile he eased the hat onto Mycroft’s head.

“There, Mr. Spence. Wouldn’t want your head to get a burn.”

Mycroft, far from bridling, as he would if Sherlock said anything of the sort, smiled at Lestrade. “Thank you.”

They were silent a moment. Then Mr. Spence said, “My place or yours?”

Lestrade considered. “Mine,” he said, after a moment. “No one’s looking for me, yet. And Archie’s there. Can’t leave him too long.”

Sherlock found himself dragged from the lake to the car park, forced to share the back seat of Mycroft’s battered little sedan with the gear for the fishing trip. There was not enough leg room, and his knees were as bent and folded as the struts of the folding chairs. His light sports jacket seemed too heavy.

“How long has Lestrade been out here,” he asked, surly and reproachful.

“You can ask me, you know. I’m right here,” Lestrade said from his place in the passenger seat. “And it’s been about six months since I first found Mr. Spence, here.”

Sherlock was disturbed by the affectionate glance his former contact with both the Met and MI5 gives his brother. “Good God. Why did you bother? He was dead. You should have left him that way. You of all people know enough to know if he was only theoretically dead, it was for his own safety.”

Lestrade shrugged. “Had to know. It was a mystery, yeah? You should know what it’s like to have a mystery pecking away at you. So I went looking, and tracked down hints, and raided files. And ended up standing on a soggy verge watching a man staring at a brock’s lair.”

“You should have walked away again,” Sherlock snapped. “He was dead. You can’t get much safer than dead.”

“When you tried it you ended up needing me to get you out of a dungeon in Serbia,” Mycroft drawled, voice more than a little toxic. “At least so far the worst I’ve experienced is a sprained ankle and a bruised thumb from hammering rebar.”

“Hammering rebar?” Sherlock sounded as shocked as if Mycroft had confessed to shagging the Queen.

“He’s building underground fences to keep the brock out,” Lestrade said, cheerfully. “Hit his thumb with the mallet a time or two.”

Sherlock hunched deep, more and more angry as his brother and Lestrade seemed less and less upset. Something had passed between them. He thought about it.

“You’re not going to leave,” he said, then, offended to the core. “You’re going to keep ruining his cover.”

“Well, if you and he have both got through and found me on your own, it’s not that secure anymore, is it?” Mycroft said, sounding too reasonable. “And, really—we’re both retired, at least from espionage. It’s not like we’re much danger to anyone.”

Sherlock refused to talk, then, until they reached Lestrade’s. There he found himself turned into a beast of burden, loaded up with folding chairs and blankets and totes and led through the little terraced building to the back garden…only to find a hurricane of frantic birds, barking dog, and feathers—feathers and blood everywhere.

“Bloody hell,” Lestrade said.

“Oh, Archie…” Mycroft’s voice was shocked, and grieving. “Oh, you bad, bad boy…”

“No, mate, ‘s not Archie,” Lestrade said, wading out into his own garden and looking around. He whistled the frantic little dog to him. It took a moment—Archie was wild with fury, barking and racing in circles, growling and bristling, and snapping at Sherlock’s shins. “C’mere, you. Yeah, yeah. Here, boy.” He pulled the little dog close. “No blood on him. Or not enough for him to have killed the hens. Come on. It’s all right.” He looked up at Mycroft, whose distress was palpable. “Here. He’s been good.”

Mycroft hunched down, squatting low. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Look—it’s on his paw pads, but not the tops of his paws. It’s on his flanks, but not his beard. He didn’t do it.”

Sherlock watched as the two hunched together on the grass, both bent close over the frenzied little dog. He watched as Lestrade lifted Archie into Mycroft’s arms.

“Here—you hold him. I’ve got to reckon what happened, and who’s lost,” Lestrade said. He looked around. “Hedwig’s gone. From the looks of it shot with something big enough to just…well. There’s nothing left.”

“Oh, Greg! No…”

“Let be. We can reckon with the loss later.” Lestrade looked bitterly at Sherlock. “No chance you did this as a warning, eh? A way of suggesting I move on?”

Sherlock didn’t bother to object he’d never do anything of the sort. The truth was he would in a moment if he’d thought it necessary or useful—and if he’d known earlier what he now did, he’d have thought it both. Mycroft taught him well that caring was not an advantage, and whatever was going on now between Mycroft and Lestrade, it’s not an advantage. Not the way he figured it, in any case. But he did shrug and say, “Not me. Will you take the warning?”

“Hell I will.” Lestrade turned around the little garden, stuffed with plants leaping high and bursting with blooms, filled with the surviving chickens. “Varmints can shoot my chickens, but they’re not making me move.”

“You’re putting Mycroft at risk.”

“At this point, he’s not,” Mycroft said. “If I’m found, it’s too late for him to leave—he might as well stay as an ally.”

“Or a hostage to fortune.” Sherlock glowered at his brother. “You’ve forced me to admit that’s what my friends are to me. Are you really going to fall into the same trap? Or…no.” His voice twists the dagger blade of resentment. “I forgot. You don’t do friends. Do you?”

The yard was silent for one painful, uncomfortable moment, filled with nothing but whining dog and clucking, fretful chickens. Then Mycroft glanced at Lestrade, then met his brother’s eyes with cold, controlled fury.

“DCI Lestrade is my friend. That is not changing in the foreseeable future. Make of it what you will.” H1e stalked from the garden and into the house, dog still held tight in his arms. He stroked feather fragments from the black fur as he went in, murmuring, “It would appear we’re not in Kansas, anymore, Archie….”

Lestrade barely held back a snort. He glared at Sherlock. “Don’t be a twat, Sherlock. Get the gear stowed in the shed, then help me clean up out here a bit.”

There was only the one hen dead, though Sherlock found that incredible in light of the amount of blood, feathers, and flesh spread over the back garden. Lestrade made sad little noises as he collected the remains, using rake and broom to try to return order to paradise. Sherlock looked warily around. It was nothing he’d expected.

He’d seen Lestrade’s flat in London. It was much of a class-level with this, though more modern. Much of that portion of London was smashed during the Blitz, and even what remained had been in many places knocked over to allow redevelopment. But the core difference was one of investment—of time, of self, of personality. Lestrade had retired from the Met a few years ago, but had put very little effort into the London flat. He’d gardened, with a sort of automatic determination, as though unwilling to admit that retirement was the end of the line for him. He would still be productive if it killed him. But the beds were utilitarian and without much character, and the labor spent on them was obviously little more than it took to get a crop out of enough plants to justify the claim to having gardened in the first place. The inside of the flat was drab and featureless, with worn furniture and old art that had obviously  been what Lestrade’s ex-wife had chosen to leave behind.

The little flat here in the town outside Manchester, mere minutes from Mycroft’s cottage out on a nearly country lane, was sparsely furnished also—but bursting with color and character. A guitar hung in a rack by the end of a vivid red loveseat. A collection of vivid mismatched mugs hung from hooks over the little table in the eating area. Lestrade had purchased old album covers and found a way to hang them off the wall in repeating squares—no! They were real albums, and he’d stored them on the wall in decorative patterns. There was an actual old turntable on a little chest, and speakers. There were catalogues and books about plants.

In the garden there were vegetables and flowers and chickens and what looked like an old pigeon loft in the middle of a refurbishing. Lestrade was growing dahlias! All sorts of dahlias—big ones that seemed ready to try out as sunflowers, they were so large, and middle-sized ones with neatly serried petals spiraling out like illustrations of the Golden Ratio. They were white and red and gold and pink.

Sherlock, with a rake in his hand, stood in front of one. It was waist high with blossoms big as small boule loaves. The petals were firm, with good substance, and they seemed almost luminous—white grading to deeper and deeper pink at the edges.

“Those ones remind me of lotuses,” Lestrade said.

“Too many petals,” Sherlock said, tersely. “Too orderly.”

“But look how the white and the pink just glow,” Lestrade said.

“I didn’t know you liked dahlias.”

“Neither did I.”

“What made you start? It’s not like Mike’s got a thing for gardens. Brown thumb.”

Lestrade just smiled and shrugged. “Doesn’t always work that way,” he said.

“How does it work, then?” Sherlock asked, knowing he sounded like a suspicious guardian asking Lestrade’s intentions.

Lestrade shrugged again, keeping up a steady stroke with the broom. “I don’t know. How does it work for you and John?”

“John and I aren’t a…”

Lestrade looked up. “Neither are Mike and I.”

Sherlock was silent for a time, then said, “That may be worse. You know he’s…”

“Gay?”

“Mmmm.”

“Yes. You know I’m bi?”

Sherlock gave Lestrade a look of smoky, ember-hot disgust. “Oh, really, Lestrade. I do have eyes.”

Lestrade grunted. “So.”

“So—John and I aren’t…we’re friends.”

“Yes. And? Your point?”

“He’s going to fall in love with you. He’s going to want more.”

Lestrade stopped sweeping and leaned on the broom. He shook his head, ruefully. “You of all people should know it’s never that simple. Leave it, Sherlock. We’re friends. The rest will work itself out.”

“Not if that’s all you want.”

“Sherlock…”

“He’s never had anyone,” Sherlock blurted. “I mean—not anyone close. Mummy and Father. Me. A few professional allies…and some of them were the ones who betrayed him this last time. He’s never had a friend besides me: I’m the closest thing to a friend Mycroft Holmes is capable of.” He frowned bitterly. “You have no idea how difficult it is to be the only real person in Mycroft’s life. His one weakness. His one peer.”

“Rejoice,” Lestrade said, irony dripping. “You have been set free.” He returned to sweeping the grass, fretting away at little groups of feathers. He sighed sadly. “She was a nice hen.”

“What?”

“Hedwig. Silver spangled Hamburg. Sweet temper. Good layer. I’ll miss her.”

Sherlock grunted.

“I’d miss Mike more.”

Sherlock looked at him, and away. “It’s not safe. The two of you are—obvious. Easy. You didn’t even notice me watching, Lestrade.”

“You’re sure we’re being hunted?”

“Mike is.” Sherlock looked around the little garden. Even with the best he and Lestrade could manage, there was still a spatter of blood on the pavers of the patio, and an even dusting of feathers on the grass. “I would say you’re in the line of fire, now, too.”

“Then we’re going to have to stop them. Because it’s too late to avoid them already—and…” He met Sherlock’s eye. “And it probably always was. If they’re hunting him even now, Sherlock, they never would have given up.”

Sherlock nodded. “I’ll try to find out who it is, then,” he said. “Mary and John can help.”

“I’ll call in favors. No one thinks I’m dead. I’ll say I’m trying to sort out a cold case.”

“In a way you are. I still don’t know why Anthea betrayed him.”

“See what you can learn. I’ll do the same. Now, though…” He glanced into his house. Mycroft was fussing in the kitchen, Archie at his ankles. “Now I’m going to go in and get that white goop off his face before it soaks into every pore.”

Sherlock watched, standing on the patio, as the older man went into the flat. He watched as he joined Mycroft, talking, laughing, leaning down to pat the dog, then drawing the younger man to the sink. Lestrade dampened a paper towel and began to swab zinc ointment off Mycroft’s nose, smiling as Mycroft made faces like a little boy getting a napkin face-wash from his mum in a café. Mycroft grimaced, said something apparently ironic to the dog that made Lestrade laugh—then reached up and stroked the man’s silver hair, appearing to brush away feather fragments. He said something more, his face gentle—a face Sherlock remembered, and too often worked hard to forget.

Mr. Spence and Lestrade were under surveillance. They didn’t even know it. Instead, they stood, together, at their ease—two caring men caring for each other.

Sherlock felt a shiver, and the memory of laughter in the entry of Baker Street.

_“Okay,” John had said, “That was ridiculous.”_

_Sherlock had leaned on the wall, panting, watching him, feeling the entire unfamiliar sense of having a compatriot—a comrade in arms, even as John continued,_

_“That was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done.”_

_“And you invaded Afghanistan,” Sherlock said, teasing as he’d teased no one before but Mycroft—unsure what response he’d get. Even Mycroft was irked as often as he was amused._

_John had laughed. No, giggled—a high pitched hiccupping giggle Sherlock tumbled into. A kind of laughter he’d never shared before with anyone but Mycroft, but without all the complications and complexities, and angers and envies, and competition. He was Sherlock. John was John. John and Sherlock were, suddenly…._

_John smiled at Sherlock. “That wasn’t just me,” he quipped back, his grin inviting Sherlock to share the laughter._

_Sherlock kept laughing._

_And that was how it began._

He watched Lestrade and Mycroft and frowned, unsure. It was friendship. It was love—but, then, when forced he could admit that in some sense he and John loved each other, even if it was never a matter of beds or embraces.

It sang to Sherlock of the dark entry of Baker Street, and of laughter.

He put his hand on the glass of the back entry, and sighed. Whatever else, he thought, now he was fighting for two lives, not just one.


	2. Not a Real Chapter...Links

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amatemi Ben Mio, recordings.

You have no idea how hard it was to find a good version of "Amatemi Ben Mio," the motet Mycroft mentions. Audio chocolate mousse.

 

Here's the thing--this is a gorgeous, gorgeous motet, with a baroque tick-tock counterpoint beat running under it, lush and sweet and very tight six-voice harmony. It is short. It is a love song. I can't translate it perfectly--Google Translate fails me, and my understanding of basic romance languages only carries me so far. There are a zillion ways to screw this piece up. 

Then I found four different versions, each gorgeous, each somewhat right. One's too fast. One works too hard to gussy up the dynamics, stripping away a bit too much of the natural flow of the music and words. One is so fast one wishes to comment to the otherwise wonderful young sextet about the follies of singing while either terrified or racing on speed. One is a male choir that loses the delicate lace of the soprano/contralto/alto music. And so on. In most the recording quality falls a bit short.

But taken together these three should give a brilliant sense of what this thing sounds like when you give it your best. It's all about the insane beauty of the voices moving across each other in intimate spendor. It's just amazing.

 

[Mixed choir--a bit too much dynamic laboring but otherwise very nice.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljKP_ZeGRSo)

[Gorgeous women's choir](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wt2y3moWKp0)

[Great young Russian group. Too-too fast. And there's more music after, but Amatemi is first.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hasL5dqCroM)

[Men's Choir](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZytOAfpjlMo)

 

Here's the thing--each of these is flawed, but beautiful, and together they give a great idea of just how amazing it is to sing a love song that sounds like the first time you kiss and it WORKS. You know--that first hot, sweet, tender, shivering kiss? The miracle kiss that makes it all make sense? That's what Amatemi can sound like. Just amazing.


End file.
